Mass Effect: Fall Out
by ShaZMaN11
Summary: What happens to the Normandy crew, past and present, after the Reaper War
1. Chapter 1 - Garrus

**The Vigalante – Garrus Vakarian - 19 hours after the battle for earth**

Garrus Vakarian stood in London, where the heart of the battle for Earth was fought. What he looked at did not look like one of the many crown jewels of humanity. It was littered with bodies, debris and the city was a war zone. The Reapers destroyed everything they saw, attempting to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy. The horrors they inflicted on all galactic races were unforgiveable that in some peoples mind, the dead were lucky. Those who experienced the Reaper war weren't the same people who entered it.

Garrus decided he'd leave earth on a later transport. The Normandy made it back to Earth within hours after crashing on the uncharted world, the ship was assumed lost with all hands and its return was the best thing to lift the morale of mourning families and soldiers. It is the ship that led the charge against Sovereign, conqueror of the Collectors and the destroyer reapers.

"No, that wasn't the Normandy, it was him." Garrus quietly murmured to himself, thinking out aloud. Garrus was about to spiral into a mountain of regret before he was thankfully interrupted.  
"Garrus Vakarian, Geth platforms have completed salvage for their own forces. We offer assistance as you see fit." One of the Geth Primes said. During the initial battle in London, the Geth ground forces were focusing mostly on the western side of France and Belgium, setting up artillery and AA cannons to help the fleet. They succeeded but with extremely high casualties. Without their artillery support and AA cannons, the Reapers would've sent in too many re-enforcements for the London teams to handle. Everyone owes the Geth their lives and the irony wasn't lost to anyone.

"Thanks, umm, Geth?" Garrus had no idea what to call it, "Can you and whatever platforms you can spare help the Asari search for survivors on the other side of the river?" Almost every squad sent in on the opposite side of the Thames had lost communications; Major Coates reported an 87% casualty rate.

"Acknowledged, this platform will stay within the immediate area in case of any notifications you should be informed of." The Geth Prime immediately turned around and walked off towards the closest Alliance shuttle to help with repairs. The Prime communicated to other Geth at the speed of light and within seconds Geth fighters were overhead.

Garrus would never get used to someone asking him for advice or orders. But like it or not (which he didn't) he was the highest ranking Turian on Earth since Primach Victus left for Palaven and was designated to lead the Turian's search and rescue effort of the UK and France. But, since he was a famous all round Turian bad boy, he'd unofficially become the top dog on the search and rescue. Garrus never did like leadership, or leaders for that matter. The only real exceptions being Shepard and Victus and that alliance admiral, what was his name? Gerrel? No, that was the Quarian. Hacket! The few chances Garrus had at leader ship Garrus failed, on Omega when he got his entire squad killed before Shepard pulled him out of the fire. Garrus had had fleets at the tip of his three fingers and couldn't save his home world. Palaven would be nothing but ashes without Shepard's intervention. Shepard, Shepard, Shepard. No matter how hard he tried, Garrus couldn't help his train of thought going back to his late commander. Why did he leave? Why did he turn tail and jump on the Normandy. He was there witnessing Tali pour her heart and soul at to Shepard, while marines died around them, and Garrus couldn't even muster up a goodbye. He wanted to fight; he should've fought beside the best dam person the galaxy would ever know.

"The galaxy wasn't worthy of you Shepard. For what it's worth, I'm sorry. Sorry I wasn't there for you til the end." Garrus would never live down the regret he faced over his decision. Why did he run he kept asking himself? Then his omni-tool made a beep, indicating he had a message. Grateful for the distraction eh checked the message and he found his answer to the question that was ripping his soul apart.

**To: **Garrus Vakarian

**From:** Tali Zorah Vas Normandy

_Garrus, I don't know what to do know. For years my people had searched for a home that wasn't a spaceship. I was lucky enough to find it. But then, well you know the story. I need help Garrus; my home is gone, he went to the Citadel and never returned. I don't know what to do anymore. I need a friendly face with me. This dammed fleet can't reach Rannoch fast enough. I'm planning to go to the place where our shuttle landed and Shepard, he gave me a rock. A rock! The only dammed thing I have to remember the love of my life is a rock from a world he'd never been to. Oh Keelah, here come the tears. Anyways, I'm going to go there and build a home. Please, whenever you get a moment, come visit, I know you have important things to do but please. I need a friend, someone to mourn with. Liara said she'd try to come soon but I doubt that will be for months. _

_Please Garrus; you're one of the few friends I have in the universe._

That's why he left. Tali needed him. The moment he was finished here on Earth he would get the first shuttle to Rannoch. If none were going there he'd make one. He was about to go co-ordinate the search and rescue with his second in commands when he was interrupted by a Salarian.

"Garrus Vakarian?" He asked, Salarians always sounded excited, but this one seemed a whole lot more than usual.

"Yeah, that's me."

"I'm Major Kirrahe, I believe we met on Virmire and then again on Surkesh, but that doesn't matter right now. Garrus, we've found him. We found Commander Shepard."


	2. Chapter 2 - Kasumi

**The Thief – Kasumi Goto - 2 weeks after the battle for Earth**

Kasumi Goto, the best thief in the business, not the most famous, had watched her step long enough that she was able to retire from the big heists. She now mostly spent her time fiddling around with her stupid greybox. For a couple of weeks, she'd sat in her new home and had replayed the available memories of her former lover Kaiji Okuda. She was minutes away from making a breakthrough and could barely contain her excitement. Killing Donovon Hock had probably been the most satisfying thing she'd ever done. A close second was pulling off her first successful robbery. She could tell she was daydreaming, but dreams and memories were all she seemed to have.

_The Mona Lisa was twenty metres away. She could smell the 700 year old painting from the beginning of the hallway. She'd cut the electricity, the Element Zero traps hotwired in the floor which would send her floating in the middle of the room were fried… probably. The guards were busy at an "intruder" at the southern end of the building. _

_She knew what was in this room. She could sell the painting, quit and live like a queen, or maybe she'd keep doing this. _

_She let out a quiet giggle, "Quit, no, no, no. This is fun" She activated her tactical cloak and took a small, deliberate step onto one of the eezo traps….. Nothing, she was good to go. She walked to the other end of the room, hacked the alarm for the glass panel and then cut it open with her diamond hard omni-blade. Grabbing the painting she began to walk away, but almost forgot one thing, her call card. She turned around and put a single red rose where the forever known painting had been moments ago. _

_Giggling yet again, she decided to make this thievery more interesting._

"_Well, that was easy!" She yelled. Seconds later, guards stormed into the building._

_They found nothing but a rose. _

Kasumi would never give up thieving, stealing, robbery, heists, burglary, and shop-lifting anything that involved sneaking around on her toes, it was her passion. She was a kleptomaniac and proud. Cerberus even had a kill order on her which she held with pride. The official document had been printed out and hung up on a wall. She was just about to put down the Grey box when Kasumi got a message from… Liara T'soni?

"Why would she be messaging me? She hardly knows me at all, aside from our raid on the Shadow broker's base we haven't spoken. And second off how did she…. Oh right, Shadow Broker." She spoke to herself; she tended to do that when she was on her own.

She decided she'd leave the message for later, no doubt if the Shadow Broker wanted her dead she'd either be dead or have known there was bounty on her head. The Broker didn't tend to be so courteous when he was about to assassinate somebody. But that was the **old **broker, that gigantic Yahg was the ugliest thing she'd ever seen.

"Ha, so I'm not gonna be killed anytime soon. Well that's boring." Slightly disappointed, she kept fiddling with the Grey box, hoping to have more memories to relive with Keiji.

Keiji had been very secure with this amazing piece of technology, it had way too many firewalls for any sane person to be bothered going through. Almost all the time spent since she'd retaken the Grey box had been focused on cracking its code. She guessed that she had roughly 40% of it unlocked. That whole Batarian massacre thing must've been a lot bigger than she thought. Just as she thought she was about to be able to relive another memory…. another firewall. Moaning in frustration, she continued hacking.

"Dammit Keiji" She sighed.


	3. Chapter 3 - Grunt

**The Tank-Bred – Urdnot Grunt - 3 Weeks after the battle for Earth**

The Leader of Aralakh Company, the creation of a maniac, stood staring at the rubble of what was once the remains of Clan Sheerk. It was a good fight, one he wouldn't soon be forgetting. Sheerk was one of the few clans left who still wanted revenge for the genophage and therefore opposed Clan Urdnot. They didn't really have any more say in the matter, they were all dead.

A week after the battle for Earth, Wrex assembled all Clan leaders to The Hollows where they discussed the future of all Krogan. Sheerk's leader Slite, announced his intentions for the Krogan: a violent one. Slite challenged Wrex in hand to hand combat to decide the rightful leader of the Krogan. Needless to say, it wasn't much of a fight. Wrex then ordered Aralakh Company to wipe out the clan. It took barely an hour for Sheerk to be eradicated. The non-combatants were now to become part of clan Urdnot.

"We're ready to go, move out." Grunt said to the lead Tonka driver. Grunt picked up the last ammunition box salvaged from Sheerk's main compound and got into his Tonka.

"Why Urdnot? Of all the clans to conquer us, it had to be the one with the tank-bred." A Krogan POW whispered under his breath, the other two POWs mumbling their agreement. He was one of Sheerk's combatants that were captured during the battle; Grunt remembered defeating him. He'd shot away his gun and before he knew it, Grunt had tackled him to the ground, stuck his claymore in his face and asked the question: Surrender or death?

"Why Sheerk? Of all the clans to conquer, it had to be the one with the most whiny, pathetic excuses for Krogan on all of Tuchanka. Consider yourself lucky to even get the chance to become part of Urdnot. Also keep in mind this certain tank-bred was the one to destroy everyone and everything you know." Grunt's soldiers laughed in approval, slapping him on the back and flexing their muscles at the three POWs.

The trio instantly fell silent. Grunt took out his omni-tool and sent a message to Wrex that Sheerk was destroyed. Getting bored, he popped open the hatch on the roof of the Tonka and climbed up. Sitting down, he put down his vindicator and claymore and started eating his noodles.

"A little spicy" He said to himself. "Heh, heh, heh" he laughed, remembering his encounter with Shepard on the Citadel, dammed C-Sec, everyone thought his battle master was dead. But Grunt could feel it in his blood, his brain said Shepard was dead but his instinct said alive. Shepard was on the Citadel when the Reapers were destroyed, the Citadel fared no better than the Reapers themselves. He was told he was in a place called Wales, stopping any Reaper air or sea units coming in from some other Earth place called North America. He was just about to get up and share that war story with his Krogan when the floor rumbled.

He looked off in the distance, the dirt was spitting out of the ground. He looked to his left and it was coming from there too.

"THRESHER MAW!" He yelled, they were closing, fast. "THRESER MAW!" He yelled again. There was no time to go back into the Tonka and get his soldiers out,. He grabbed his vindicator and put it in its holster on his back. The maws were seconds from attacking the convoy. He ran, picking up his claymore on his way and jumped straight off the Tonka. He hit the ground right as the one of the maws devoured the Tonka he was on merely seconds ago. He looked to his left and saw another Thresher Maw take down one of the other Tonkas.

"Go, go, go! Get back to Urdnot!" He barked in his omni-tool to the rest of his squad. The rest of the Tonka's sped off and Grunt was left alone with two hungry thresher maws.


	4. Chapter 4 - Miranda

**The Runaway – Miranda Lawson – 3 ½ weeks after the battle for Earth**

"That's it, they're all back online." Miranda announced. The best minds all species had to offer cheered. They'd just made history… again. The whole room had just proven what a unified galaxy can achieve. They'd restored the mass relays, all of them. Miranda had just watched the last relay's blue lights flicker on again. Everyone in the room had had experience with the relays. Each species had all studied the relays in their own way, Asari scientists who'd spent hundreds of years trying to figure out the secret behind the relays, operatives from STG and a trio of Turians who'd been shunned by their own government for "unpractical, incorrect and useless theories". There was even a Batarian who'd researched a way to convert mass relays into a weapon, while his previous work played to the Batarian's stereotypes as terrorists; his work now, literally connecting a galaxy, is one of the Batarian's many steps into re-joining the galactic society.

Miranda herself was the lone human aside from her alliance contact on the other end of her comm.

"Samantha, tell Hackett all the relays are back online" She said, barely containing her excitement, she'd was part of the team who'd conquered the biggest problem post-war.

"Oh my god, how did you, I…I don't even, how?" Traynor responded from the other end of the comm.

"Traynor, I'll have to tell you about it another time, there's still work to do." Miranda lied, there was work to do but she had no intention of doing it right now. Just as Miranda was about to cut the line, Traynor asked another question. Miranda liked Samantha but she did notice that she rarely knew when to stop speaking.

"Wait, wait, wait, one question. Is it true that the Alliance had a plan for the Relays all along? An Admiral said they had these plans all along but nobody could tell if he was serious or not." She asked. Traynor was lucky that Miranda was the one of the only people who could reveal that information.

"Yes, we knew that the crucible would release a massive amount of energy and that energy would be distributed via the relays. The only solid information we had on the relays was that they had a limited amount of energy storage. So, massive amount of energy going into limited energy storage was going to be a problem. That problem caused the relays to explode so our friends at the Alliance made a backup plan: collect resources and minds in case that happened." Miranda responded, everything she said was true. Although she wasn't trusted by most of the Alliance members she met due to her being ex-cerberus, she was respected which got her many assignments, those assignments earned her trust. That trust, got her on this project.

She actually was the one who suggested species home worlds should be prioritized. The whole team looked at her oddly when she said that, they thought, due to limited time and resources, it would be better that they started at the star systems closest to the crucibles detonation point, Earth. That the fleets could slowly spread while combining and sharing anything they had spare, instead of sudden free-for-all for resources which the team believed could spark another war. Miranda convinced them otherwise, that a sudden free-for-all wouldn't happen. So far, everyone was getting along rather well, all things considered.

"Yes! I knew it! You owe me 100 credits Michael!" Samantha said happily, she cut the connection immediately.

Miranda got up from her desk and celebrated with the rest of the team well into the night. She'd been working, non-stop it seemed the moment she joined Cerberus, those xenophobes actually had indirectly saved the galaxy in more than one way. The only reason Miranda knew so much about the relays is because she spent most of her time at Cerberus researching them. She relaxed, let her guard down and toasted to a new and unified galaxy.


End file.
